Postmodernism (后现代化主义): “The Chinese did it first” is a relatively safe statement to make about any aspect of society – as if having a spherical conception of the world in the 2nd century BC wasn’t enough, the Chinese also managed to beat Foucault to the punch: The Chinese word for history is 历史. The first character has two parts: a factory (厂) and power (力). The power is in the factory, which would indicate that the factory is constructing, or manufacturing power. The second character, 史, depicts a hand with a pen writing at a desk. These two characters are combined in order to create the word “history”. Therefore, history - 历史 - is the manufacturing of power by the hand of someone at a desk. What’s really crazy is that this is the simplified version of the character. Chinese characters, though currently dauntingly complicated, were even more difficult before the Mao era. Mao simplified many of the characters in order to make them easier to remember, which would increase literacy – a good goal for a communist. This change, which happened in the fifties, did not affect the Chinese language outside of the mainland, so Taiwan and the various Chinatowns throughout the US and Canada use the traditional character sets. They do not have such a blatant representation of Mao’s understanding of power/knowledge.

A few days ago, I had considered leaving this program and doing something else with my time here in China. After talking with friends here, calling home, and exploring options with my study abroad advisor, I finally talked with the head of the program. As a result, I am getting an extra hour of tutoring each day as well as ridiculous amounts of moral support. Every time I turn a corner, a 老师 is there to tell me how much I'm improving. So, I feel better now and I'm finally in the mindset that I've made a choice to be here, as I didn't feel that way before. I'd like to thank everyone that helped me through the last week, as I was really not doing well. I'd also like to apologize for this post. I feel as if the academic part of my brain is falling apart, so I was extremely excited to do some mickey mouse scholarship using my Chinese dictionary.

The weekend finally came and my Saturday night was spent searching for a Chinese rock concert. With vague directions provided by That’s Beijing, the expat magazine, myself and a buddy went looking for Star Time, which is part of a four story entertainment megaplex. The top floor is a concert hall, the third floor is a huge, extremely ritzy lounge bar, the second and first floors are a disco called Tango, and the basement is all KTV, which is what the Chinese call Karaoke. Next to this huge and bustling building is an equally huge and bustling 24-hour, four-story dim sum restaurant. It was a strange mix of people, as the attendants of the rock show were entirely different than the well-dressed lounge patrons or the very drunk KTVers. Surprisingly, there were few other westerners at the show, so we got stared at. However, after only two weeks, I’ve grown used to getting gawked at. The first band finished tuning up and they started playing hard rock that sounded too much like Korn. The next band came out and each of the band members wore the same thing – brown collared button-up shirts with matching pants and a red arm band. The arm band read AK-47, the band’s name. However, their uniform was a clear message – they were dressed like the Red Guard, Mao’s youth corps during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guard terrorized the Chinese people by accusing people of capitalist sentiments. Regardless of how unsubstantiated these claims were, they justified taunts, property seizure, and occasionally beatings. The politics of the band's lyrics were lost on me, but I liked their music. It borrowed elements from New Wave and Hardcore, but mostly sounded like Rage Against the Machine in Chinese.

That was probably the most notable event. I have some more things to talk about, including making jiaozi at my host family, why Chinese people wear “SARS” masks, why Chinese people like wearing red, and the underclass of servants known as “FuWuYuan”, but I’ll talk about them later, as I have 70 characters to memorize for tomorrow.

I somehow managed to survive the arduous and frustrating first week of classes. I’ve apparently lost my once uncanny memory – short-term, working, and long. I spend hours trying to store a few characters to no avail, a brain gimmick that would have been no problem for my high-school self. I suppose it reflects a real education rather than the collection of memory tests that was my high school education. While the weekend was fun, the next week has already begun and it is already shaping up to be both painful and psychologically damaging.

This is a Chinese Language program for computers. It's essentially all I have seen of China since the last post.

This was written before my first class:

台球 - Billiards

Tonight I went to a Chinese pool hall. . .

Me talk pretty one day – I think I’m going to have to curtail my listening to music because it is stimulating parts of my brain that ought to be dying. (I had the thought of translating The GZA’s “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth” into Chinese. I likely still will because it’ll be interesting.) I feel like I’m going to lose my ability to speak English. It’ll all be put into memorizing important Chinese words – like 紧张 (nervous). The entire purpose of the language pledge, I think, is two-fold. While we are surely devoting more parts of the brain to Chinese, we are doing so by destroying the English-speaking parts in order to make room.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that I know that in about twenty years science will have developed a pill that allows you to remember everything you read and hear. Or at least something that will dramatically increase our ability to memorize information. However, that sort of invention will be obsolete by the time it is created. Indeed, by the time the memory pill is manufactured, we will have such a seamless interaction with sources of information that memorization will be a useless skill.

---

Since then, I have done nothing but eat, sleep, and study Chinese. I, for some reason, cannot remember the words. It is very difficult and I'm not keeping up with the class. Hopefully, I'll get better at this, because right now I'm just desperately hanging on. However, I am improving and can have survival-level conversations with other English-speaking students in Chinglish. Since we can only speak Chinese, it is useful to be able to ask people if they want to "Leave Buy Food Want?"

污染 - Pollution
蟑螂 – Cockroach
不三不四 – Sketchy (not three not four)

The pollution in Beijing is unbearable. Objects as near as just fifty feet away are obscured by clouds of toxins and smog. Just normal breathing has been giving me a headache and everyone’s smoking only adds to the toxins. As soon as I get off of the smoggy street, I go into a smoky room. I’ll try to find some pictures to corroborate this.

Yesterday was the last day that we could speak English, so all of the students hit the bars. Near to our school is a strip called San Li Tou (pronounced San Li Touar in a Beijing Accent), which was a trip. There were beggars everywhere and I followed some of the returning students back to a back-alley bar that was supposed to have cheap drinks. On the way there, we passed a number of bars that we packed with Chinese. Each had a small band playing for them and were filled with smoke. The bands ranged from rock acts complete with grungy, long-haired rockers in tight pants to two –piece mom-and-pop acts which only had an old woman singing and a guy with a keyboard. In each of these bars, a bunch of older-looking Chinese men were sitting at tables that were placed all over the dance floor. It was strange because it wasn’t a rock show, nor could people really talk to each other because of the music. I was trying to look into these bars in order to figure out the social dynamics, but my efforts were hindered by the small children grabbing at my arms and putting their hands in my pockets.

We arrived at the bar, which was essentially a basement with a counter. I was amazed that such a place could exist in China, but I’m learning that any expectation of China is totally unfounded. Many of the expectations are the result of orientalized bullshit that doesn’t account for the vast economic changes that have happened within the last twenty years. Speaking of orientalism, it really affects everyone’s conceptions of Chinese women. It’s very difficult for a Chinese woman to be sexy in American eyes because we’ve been so conditioned to think that they are cute, which is manifest from our conception of them as children. At best, they are beautiful, but it is an untouchable beauty, like a child. However, the instances in American culture when they are sexy is a fetishism of the exotic.

Alright I’ll stop waxing philosophical using ideas from books I haven’t read (I’ve read Said’s intro. Do I get credit for that?). After having drinks, we went to a disco called Club Blu, which was on the third level of the building across the street. On the way up the stairs, I saw fancy satin curtains through the door in the second floor. I went through the door and found a beautiful café that was full of books. I looked around this huge café/bookstore for a while and realized that is a French-oriented restaurant that serves relatively inexpensive wine and French food. The prevalence of this sort of western restaurant is not unlike the lunch I had eaten just that day, which was at the “cozy café”, a small restaurant on the second level of a Soho building structure. They served hamburgers and other western food inside of a tiny restaurant which had about four workers serving the twelve seats. These western restaurants are all over Beijing, but they are not nearly as prevalent as the Mcdonald’s and KFC, which is usually what Chinese people associate with American culture.

The world of the private college student is small. At this program, everyone is related by just a few degrees of separation. I could go into it, but it was expected before I came here. What was a surprise was the lack of acknowledgement of Macalester, but I think that is just to be expected of small schools in general. Today, we started the language pledge and I am now trapped in a cage of incoherent speech. However, everyone seems to be struggling together and we are well aware that the only way to get out of it is to speak more.

That entry was written a while ago. It takes me a while to finish these long posts, so the few days that followed that post will be completed by using a much simpler medium: pictures and captions. The post will end with an e-mail from Anthony Carr, who will be henceforth known as Ground Control.

This is one of my roommates. We live in a very nice dorm, so I wonder how many of these guys live in some of the slums that we've seen. Many of the slums are right next to huge shiny buildings, which is characteristicically Chinese.









This woman was swinging her flag around for a few hours while listening to sparse techno. Many older people gather in the parks to pursue their hobbies and it all takes on an aspect of spectacle. Often, the spectator can become part of the show, which is what happened with the huge harmonica band in the next picture. Everyone then gathered around the band and started singing along.















Many people use the parks as a place to exercise. As you walk through a park, many older people are walking around, sometimes vigorously. Perhaps the most entertaining, outside of the flag-waving and prevalent ballroom dancing, is the incredible athleticism exhibited by the hacky-sackers. It isn't the same as American hacky sack - they play with what is best described as a huge badmitton shuttlecock. However, the accuracy and distance they can get from it is incredible. I should take a video.






There were a number of attempts to christianize China, which resulted in the construction, destruction, and reconstruction, of a number of churches. This is one of the churches that surround the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City has a church at its North, East, South, and West - this is the East Church. It isn't large or particularly beautiful, but I liked the picture becasue people are getting their wedding pictures in front of it.












Shopping is everything in China and every need is filled - except deodorant. Clothing stores are everywhere, but don't expect to ever be able to find a Ming vase, a silk padded jacket, or fancy shoes. Everyone wears western clothes. Strangely, the one place where you can find a padded silk jacket is Wal Mart.









I just thought that this was funny. Perhaps it is a reward for getting so far through this imposing entry. An even better reward is Tony's eloquent e-mail that he sent to me in response to my request for information:

yo.
heres some info that really interested me.
you certainly sparked my curiosity.
attached are the following dangerous documents:
1) wikipedia article "Media of the People's Republic of China" (english)
2) book in pdf - "Media Control in China" written by He Qinglian and published by HRIC. (chinese)
i read an excerpt in english. heres a review:
Media Control in China describes how China's much-lauded economic modernization has allowed the government to camouflage its pervasive control under the glossy façade of consumerism, with a shift from ham-fisted censorship to an elaborate architecture of Party supervision, amorphous legislation, stringent licensing mechanisms, handpicked personnel and concentrated media ownership.
*) in the future, request any info on any topic you want. i will send you whatever i find, including a wikipedia summary, within the next 24 hours.
call me ground control.
i got your back.
tony

This is what wikipedia looks like in China. Please send me information, as I will no longer have access to a vast and constantly changing cache of facts about the world. You'll probably have to send things in a word document, as links will not work.

If you want to send physical objects, they might get here if you use the English address:

Jared Rudolph
Associated Colleges in China
Foreign Students Dormitory
Capital University of Economics and Business
Hongmio, Chaoyang District
Beijing, P.R. China 100026

However, the Chinese address would likely work better:

中国， 北京
红庙， 朝阳门外大街
首都经济贸易大学
外国留学生宿舍
何杰明 （Jared Rudolph)

You’ll probably want to use both.

At five in the morning, a program is on TV that is a montage of videos of Vancouver along with sappy piano music. Lots of shots of maple leaves changing colors. According to my father, 30 percent of households in Vancouver are Chinese speaking.

It's ridiculously easy to add photos onto this website.

Today I went to the ancient Summer Palace, which is now a gorgeous park with traditional-style buildings. It is adjacent to Peking University’s imposing library that both functions as a research library and contains original texts dating back to the 5th century BC. I was traveling with a white American and everywhere we went people were looking at us.

Traveling around Beijing has been interesting. I had thought that my half-Asian features would allow me to somewhat blend into the crowd, but I am instantly recognized as a foreigner. People usually avoid eye contact, but sometimes they stare. All of my interactions have been in Chinese, and everyone encourages my use of Chinese, even if they understand English. Their patience seems infinite.

If you haven't noticed, I'm somewhat antsy to see the city of Beijing. This wanderlust is motivated largely by the incredible fear that I'll be trapped in my room studying for the next four months. Tomorrow, I take my placement exam and classes will begin on Monday. Class will be intense.

Macalester is wonderful. Two days ago, I woke up and was prepared to go through another day of wandering the streets. Just as I was leaving, my Chinese tutor, who is a 北京人，knocked on my door. I was so excited to see him after the previous day’s mishap. Tida, the Thai Macalester student in my program, had him pick her up from the airport and he took it upon himself to help us get oriented in the city. We went and got groceries and then took the subway throughout the city. He was extremely helpful and explained a number of things that I wouldn’t usually understand.

We went to a number of stores which were directed at foreign people. The particular place we went was seven floors of knock-off clothing, jewelry and DVD’s. The girls we were with, Tida, a Macalester grad named Jennifer, and a girl from my program, enjoyed the shopping while Yan and I walked through the tourist trap quickly and tried to avoid all of the pestering salespeople. After we were done, we still had to kill some time before the scheduled rendezvous with the girls. I was going to sit down on a step outside, but Yan scoffed and said that it was dirty. His disgust at the proposition of sitting on the dirty street was somewhat prudish, however this prudishness is not unfounded. Everything in Beijing is dirty. If a bike is left out for more than a day it is covered in dust. Sadly, this leaves the city with a drab feel. This is supposed to improve after a rain, and I have heard some students say that city stimulates clouds to rain before major holidays. Supposedly there is a way to do this.

Cell phones here are very cheap. One of the students bought one for forty dollars. Minutes are extremely cheap. The variety and low price of the phones lead me to believe that the American market for phones and services is unduly expensive. However, this could also be the result of the Chinese development of cell phone infrastructure.

We walked with Yan through his old neighborhood, which he said has changed markedly since the last time he had visited. On one corner, there was a string of three barbershops. Yan told me that these shops were likely a prostitution front. Through the glass windows of each shop, I could see three or four pretty girls sitting on a bench supposedly waiting for a haircut.

When we returned from our visit, a number of students had arrived. We went out to eat in a big group. There are many types of students at my program and they are all academically intense, as you would have to be in order to involve yourself in something this ridiculous. However, everyone's motivations for learning Chinese seem varied, as some are well aware of the history and politics of China and are able to reference all of the articles they’ve read about contemporary culture. Some seem to lack that knowledge, but are well aware of the economic future of China and have internships lined up for the summer.

Yesterday, I went with another student to the military history museum, which was really interesting. After seeing the exhibit at Macalester concerning the massive doctoring of photos by the Chinese government, I could recognize which picture had been altered. Naturally, many of the photos had been altered and the touchy historical events had a twist to them.

After that, we went north to a beautiful park where people were ice fishing and old couples were going for walks. There are a number of urban parks in Beijing, all of which are used by tons of people. Mostly, it is old people just hanging out and doing things. We walked some people doing water calligraphy, which is writing Chinese characters on the stone terraces using huge brush-sponges soaked in water. We were at first just watching one of the old guys doing it, but westerners rarely go unnoticed and one of the water calligraphers eventually talked to us and asked us to write our names. Naturally, a crowd of about 20 developed in order to see the 老外 (foreigners) butcher their language. However, everyone applauded our childish efforts. After we had written our names, the old man did the same thing except much prettier. He then called on his friend, who wrote our names in two beautiful cursive scripts. Everyone asked us what we studied at school. When I couldn’t properly pronounce 哲学 (philosophy), a man asked me in perfect English what my major was and then informed everyone, which led to a debate that seemed like it is not unlike the usual debate resultant from mentioning philosophy in public discourse. However, I could pick out parts of their discussion, which was centered around one man’s belief that Chinese philosophy was boring.

In China, they have to read Marxist-Leninist philosophy as well as the thought of Mao and Deng Xiaoping. This is taught in schools and it must be impossible to teach it to high-school students who don’t care about it.

It wasn't a long walk to Tianamen square, but there were a tons of things to see. On the way, I ran into Oriental Plaza, which is a street that has a lot of stores. On a Sunday afternoon, it was so crowded that it was difficult to navigate the crowd and all of the stores were packed with shoppers. It was worse than most American malls during Christmas shopping season. I marveled at the consumerism for a while before going back to the road that would eventually lead me to Tianamen square and things to touch.

On the way to Tianamen square, two girls stopped me and started talking with me. They said they wanted to practice their American slang and kept saying "sick" and "sweet" with Chinese accents. We talked in English because it was clear that my Chinese was not up to par and they really wanted to try out their slang. American Slang is very popular in China and one of my escorts, "Lilly" has bought eight books on it and a few DVD's.

As we went through Tianamen square, we talked about American Pie, which is HUGE in China. Usually, when young Chinese meet Americans, American Pie is discussed. I suspect that the Chinese government allowed for that movie to pass through because it was such an awful depiction of American students. At the end of high school, every Chinese student is studying for a do-or-die exam that will determine the course of the rest of their life. In contrast, the Chinese think that American students are ending their education with whatever is depicted in American Pie, Chinese interpretations of the movie vary, but they all reflect poorly on the work ethic of real American students. Lilly asked me if there really was a party after graduation where everyone lost their virginity. If you were to briefly reflect on the movie, it is not difficult to determine how she drew these conclusions. From there, it really isn't a far jump to think that this party was not only condoned, but also sponsored by the school, as the kids all targeted Prom. Whatever be the collective Chinese interpretation of American Pie, it surely doesn't lead them to believe that America is earning its future. People here work all the time (Cab drivers work all but two days a month) and likely have no idea that their economy is being artificially depressed by the government.

Information is communicated in one way that I had not anticipated. Newspapers are posted around the city. Papers are affixed on little kiosks which are located at what seems like every other street corner, sort of like a college campus. People gather around these kiosks and read the news, which I assume all comes from the government. This is not different than the traditional way of conveying information, which was to put huge posters up around the city. New techniques are also used and the Chinese government officially owns ten CCTV (China Central TV) stations and heavily censors the rest. CCTV broadcasts a ton of propaganda and there's a lot of flag waving, as expected. Also on TV are a number of dramas that take place in Manchu china. Everyone wears the traditional (at least Manchu traditional, so 1644-1912) hairstyles and clothing. These seem to be very popular - at any time there are at least three of them on the ten channels. There are also the Kung Fu epics, which are feature outlandish costumes and fighting pig-man chimeras. They're strange and difficult to understand.

The crowding and the pollution of Beijing are noticeable before your plane lands. As the plane starts to descend, the horizon never turns into a distinct line. Rather the blue-white haze that is seen at high elevation takes on a yellow-brown hue. The horizon never appears and the yellow-brown seems closer and closer as the smog gets thicker and thicker. Buildings, enormous boxes with windows, can be seen through the smog. Each of these look like they hold about 100 efficiency apartments and they are all ugly. In the states, they'd be unacceptable for low-income housing. Identical buildings are organized in blocks of eight or ten. For every block of these buildings there is an adjacent construction project dominated by a towering crane.

My cab ride to my host university brought me closer to the city center, where buildings looked less like boxes. However, this only meant that the cranes towered more and were as much of the skyline as the buildings. The ride was disastrous. I was dropped off at the wrong school and then had to hail another cab to get to the right place. When I was trying to get to the school and when I was checking in, many of my fears were realized. I really can't communicate at all in this language. I'm scared because this is going to be hard and there is no way out.

This was written a few days before I went to China while I was in Vancouver:

When I write, I often tend to be pretentious, which is likely the result of a heavy-handed approach to communication manifest from doing philosophy for the last two years. In this blog, I'm going to try to avoid this penchant. However, I'd like my words to carry some weight, as I don't want to mitigate the importance of the endeavor I am about to pursue - In a few days, i will be leaving for Asia for months in order to learn Chinese.

The collegiate jaunt into Asia is fast becoming cliched. The interest in China, which is reflected and perpetuated by the New York Times, has caused a huge number of students to learn the language of "the dynamic Middle Kingdom". At Macalester, the enrollment in Introductory Chinese has increased almost five-fold since its inception two years ago. My journey to China is one instance of a more global phenomenon, as American students inticed by job opportunities are taking an interest in China. I like to believe that my own journey to Asia is fueled by curiosity about Asia rather than a striving to profit from its exploitation. Still, I recognize that my decision to study China is not as idealistic and academic as I would lead myself to believe. Veering my academic interests towards Asia was a rare and paternally celebrated move towards the pragmatic. This pragmatism has also allowed me to entertain plans ranging from learning Indonesian to enrolling in law school to participating in the business free-for-all currently beginning in China. I am one of many college-aged Americans who fear becoming a twenty-something without health care, so plans about my distant and ever-changing future will be agonized over. I hope that my scheming and get-rich-quick schemes do not overburden this journal.

I'll be there for a while, but I'm not really sure how long. There are some certainties. I will arrive on January 13th to participate in a language immersion program in Beijing. At this program, I will be forced to speak only Chinese. If I am caught speaking English, I will first be given a warning. Next, I will have my grade reduced from one of my classes. The third time, I will be expelled from the school. The program ends in early May. My visa is good until the 13th of June and my flight will return to Milwaukee on the 15th of August, but that is subject to change.

I hope that this blog is entertaining and that my friends and family will enjoy reading it. I also hope that it provides a lens to view the widespread trend of Americans studying in Asia. I will likely keep my own journal and this blog will feature only things from it that I think have widespread relevance. I would like to thank my parents for supporting this venture both financially and emotionally.